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I would never imagine that happened in Europe. Free market works if there is competition, but monopolies either natural or artificial need regulations to preven

I would never imagine that happened in Europe. Free market works if there is competition, but monopolies either natural or artificial need regulations to prevent from abusing their powers. Personal story: I live in SF Bay Area and got Comcast. Net was working really slow and got outages few times each week. To get any support I had to wait 40m to hear basic advice like restarting router. Switched to smaller provider Sonic.net. Everything works, just once got some problem (in last 3 months). My call was immediately connected to competent human which diagnosed the problem in less than 3m. Next day they proactively call to improve one more thing. Contenders usually got so much more will to do things right than monopolies.

kbenson 12y ago
As a frequent employee in the past (I've worked there multiple times and in multiple positions), I'll second that it's a really great company (and frequently gets press for being on the forefront of privacy rights for it's users). Unfortunately, when I bought my house, it was a new development and while it was pre-wired for Comcast and AT&T, those are the only options.
noazark 12y ago
You just pushed me to hop over to Sonic.net, thank you.
rel 12y ago
Living in the east bay (Berkeley) means your options are pretty limited in terms of service, but we have a local company (www.lmi.net) which has incredible service. When there was an outage, they sent the technician 2 hours after I called and I've never had any trouble with them.
shostack 12y ago
When I moved out to the Bay Area I wanted to go with Sonic, especially over Comcast. However their speeds were just SO SLOW, especially for the price, compared to Comcast. In the consumer class connections, they simply did not offer fast enough speeds, and Comcast just blew them out of the water. Really wish they'd get their speeds up as I would definitely consider switching.

kbenson 12y ago

As a frequent employee in the past (I've worked there multiple times and in multiple positions), I'll second that it's a really great company (and frequently gets press for being on the forefront of privacy rights for it's users). Unfortunately, when I bought my house, it was a new development and while it was pre-wired for Comcast and AT&T, those are the only options.

noazark 12y ago

You just pushed me to hop over to Sonic.net, thank you.

rel 12y ago

Living in the east bay (Berkeley) means your options are pretty limited in terms of service, but we have a local company (www.lmi.net) which has incredible service. When there was an outage, they sent the technician 2 hours after I called and I've never had any trouble with them.

shostack 12y ago

When I moved out to the Bay Area I wanted to go with Sonic, especially over Comcast. However their speeds were just SO SLOW, especially for the price, compared to Comcast. In the consumer class connections, they simply did not offer fast enough speeds, and Comcast just blew them out of the water. Really wish they'd get their speeds up as I would definitely consider switching.